The Tears That Wouldn't Fall
by aej1085
Summary: The final battle between Naruto and Sasuke has come to an end and Sakura is faced with the hardest decision of her life. A Naruto/Sakura onehot.


Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

**The Tears That Wouldn't Fall**

She didn't cry. She stood there breathing heavily staring at the devastation before her waiting for the breakdown and yet the tears didn't come. She had gone into this fight expecting this to happen. After all he had told them it would. But still with the sight of her two teammates dead before her among the destroyed remnants of what used to be the Hokage monument she expected to feel something. She hadn't witnessed their fight. When Konoha was invaded, she watched Naruto take off while she had stayed behind to help heal the wounded. She had felt them though. Each time they clashed it was like a knife to her heart until finally she felt nothing and that's when she had started running. Ignoring her instincts as a mednin, she continued past the injured around her until she reached the place she currently stood.

Maybe she had no tears left. It seemed that was all she did lately. She had tried to be strong like the others. She had gone as far as to try to take Sasuke-kun on by herself, but in the end she had been too weak. She had stood back tears streaming down her face and watched as Kakashi-sensei and Naruto protected her. She felt her fists clench in anger at her own weakness and tried to force those thoughts aside to focus on the destruction in front of her. The ground was littered with large craters. The trees and few buildings that once stood proudly on the mountain were reduced to nothing more than piles of rocks and wood. Remarkably the faces of the Hokages remained untouched as if they had been left behind as witnesses to the final battle between the former teammates. In the middle of all this devastation lay the bodies of the two other original members of Team 7. There was 10 feet between where their bodies had finally come to rest. Both lay on their backs, eyes staring up at the sky unseeing. Both had one hand stretched out to the other as if with the last of their strength they had still tried to reach their opponent.

Knowing the time had come for her to do what she had come to do, Sakura made her way towards him, stumbling occasionally, and dropped to her knees beside the body of her first love. She quickly reached up and closed his lifeless eyes and tried to avert her gaze from the gaping hole in his chest. She was sure Naruto wore an identical one on his own chest. He was still beautiful, this boy she had spent much of her childhood declaring her undying love for. In the years he had been gone he had grown into a man, but she could still see the young boy who loved to rile Naruto, would smirk at Kakashi-sensei's ridiculousness, and could be counted on to always protect his teammates. She reached out tentatively to brush a hand across his cold cheek. The irony that it took death for her to finally be this close to him was not lost on her.

"I'm sorry we couldn't save you, Sasuke-kun," her voice breaking into the silence that seemed to surround the area. Despite the horror of his death, she sensed certain peacefulness about him and she prayed that wherever he was he was happy. Maybe Naruto had saved him in the only way he could. At the thought of Naruto her gaze quickly turned to where blonde lay a few feet away and she reminded herself that she still had something to do. With one last look at her former love and a whispered goodbye, she pushed herself up and walked towards her best friend. As she had with Sasuke she closed his sightless eyes, but instead of just kneeling beside him she pulled the blonde so that his head rested on her lap. She wanted to remember every last detail about him. The way his hair felt when she combed her fingers through it. The whiskers on his cheeks. The beautiful hue of his eyes that all others seemed to pale in comparison. The sound of his laugh. The way he looked at her when he thought she didn't know. She let out a strangled sigh, closed her eyes, and prayed for the strength to do this.

"Sakura."

Her eyes snapped open at the sound of her name and small smile graced her lips when she saw who had spoken, "Kakashi-sensei, Yamato-taichou." Kakashi, like her, seemed unsurprised by the outcome of the fight, but Yamato was unable to hide his shock at the sight of the destruction.

"Sakura we need to take them down to the village and start preparing for the fu…"he broke off not wanting to think about all the dead, known and unknown, that lay throughout the village, "Tenzou will help you carry Naruto and I'll get Sasuke." He started making his way to the body of the other boy, but stop at the sound of her small voice.

"No."

"No?" Kakashi turned back and noticed that Sakura was gently laying Naruto's head on the ground.

She didn't meet his eyes as she spoke, "I'm not ready yet."

"Sakura please finish saying your goodbyes. We can wait," Yamato broke in having finally overcome his shock. He quickly made his way over to where Kakashi was standing. "She just lost both her teammates you can't expect her to just pick up and walk away," his tone was harsher than intended, but he too was having a hard time with the death of a boy he'd come to care about.

Kakashi's uncovered eye never left Sakura's huddled form, "Something isn't right."

Yamato's gaze followed Kakashi's, but he was unable to see anything other than a girl that was clearly in distress over the loss of her friends.

"She's not crying."

"What?" Yamato noticed for the first time the absence of tell-tale tear tracks on Sakura's face.

"Whenever Sakura's upset, no matter how hard she tries, she always breaks down in tears. With the death of Naruto and Sasuke I'd expect her to be falling apart, but she isn't."

"Maybe she's in shock." Yamato suggested, still not fully understanding the importance of something as trivial as tears.

Kakashi shook his head, "That's not it."

Sakura, lost in her own thoughts, remained oblivious to the conversation between the two men. The appearance of Kakashi-sensei and Yamato- taichou was unexpected and it made things more difficult for her. Would they try and stop her? She looked up meeting Kakashi-sensei's one-eyed stare. Of course they would. She turned her gaze back to the boy in front of her. The world already seemed so cold without him. She had made a promise to herself not so long ago and she's worked so hard and planned for so long. She couldn't let this stop her from keeping it. She began the hand seals.

Kakashi's sharp eyes immediately noticed the change in Sakura. He hadn't missed the hesitating glance in his direction and the way she had sat up straighter when she had had been looking at Naruto. There was an aura of determination about her that wasn't there before. When he saw the hand seals and felt her chakra spike he realized what she had been planning all along. He reached her in three long strides and roughly grabbed her hands stopping her from going any further with the jutsu.

"Have you lost your mind?!" He shook her as he spoke. The usually contained Kakashi was unable to hide his anger at his student's stupidity.

"What's going on?" Yamato asked coming up from behind him.

"She's planning on using a life giving jutsu to bring Naruto back. Isn't that right Sakura?"

Sakura's shoulders slumped and her head hung in defeat, effectively hiding her eyes beneath her bangs as she whispered, "Yes."

"Wh-wh-what?" Whatever Yamato had been expecting clearly that hadn't been it.

Deciding it was safe, Kakashi let go of Sakura's hands and she let them drop to rest on her knees. "You don't understand," her nails bit into her skin as she spoke.

"What's there to understand?! You were going to foolishly use a dangerous jutsu that may have never worked and would have killed you in process." This time it was Yamato's anger directed toward her.

"The village needs him," her voice was barely above a whisper.

"The village?"

She nodded keeping her eyes trained on the ground as she continued, "The village needs someone strong to help rebuild and keep them safe from future attacks. Now when they need him the most he can't be there. It always was his dream after all," They could hear the smile in her voice as she said the last part, "to be Hokage."

"So you're doing this for the village?"

Sakura started to nod, but stopped herself. Was that really the only reason she wanted to give up her life?

Kakashi seeing her indecision asked, "Why are you doing this Sakura?"

Sakura's dry eyes looked up from the spot on the ground she'd been staring at minutes before and turned to the unmoving boy lying next to her. "Because I love him," she spoke softly.

Neither Kakashi nor Yamato said anything both sensed she had more she needed to say.

"Back in the Land of Iron when I told him that I didn't mean it. At least at the time I didn't think I did. I was only trying to get him to give up his promise and stop going after Sasuke-kun. When he didn't believe me I knew I would have to kill Sasuke-kun myself, but in the end I couldn't even do that! I knew what Sasuke-kun was planning to do, but I still couldn't bring myself to kill him. I always was the weakest one out of the three of us. Even with all my training with Tsunade-sama that hadn't change. I can crush a boulder into tiny pieces, but I wasn't strong enough to kill someone who threatened to destroy the entire village. Then when I heard Naruto telling Sasuke-kun he would die with him, I promised myself I would find some way to keep that from happening. Once we returned to the village I searched day and night for jutsus that would make me strong enough to protect him, but none of them were good enough. That's when I remembered Chiyo-sama and the jutsu she used to bring back Gaara. It was easy to remember the hand seals she used and I knew if I conserved my chakra I would have enough to save him. So when the day finally came I waited and when I knew the fight had ended I took off with every intention of using that jutsu to bring Naruto back." They watched as she reached out with a shaky hand to stroke his cheek. "I told myself in the beginning that I was doing it to prove to everyone that I didn't always need to be protected. I wanted to show them I was strong enough to save him on my own. Then when that didn't seem like a good enough reason, I convinced myself I was doing it because the village would need him once all this was over with. I knew Tsunade-sama would never be strong enough again to return to her position of Hokage and the village would need someone new to take her place." Sakura looked up to face the two men, "But those were lies. The real reason was because I fell hopelessly in love with the baka."

"Sakura," Yamato's voice brought her back to the present, "You're crying."

She used her finger to wipe at her eye and when she held it up in front of her there was a single tear hanging from her fingertip. She smiled to herself as she watched it fall to the ground. All this time she thought she had ran out of tears, but they had been there all along waiting to break free when she finally stopped lying to herself.

"Please," she croaked. She didn't even try to stop the tears as they streamed down her face. "Let me do this."

"Sakura you don't even know if it will work. You could…"

"It'll work," she cut him off. "I know it will."

"How can you ask us to give you permission to kill yourself? Especially when you have no way…"

"Use the jutsu Sakura." This time it was Kakashi who interrupted him.

Yamato gaped at him, "How can you be okay with her doing this?!"

Kakashi smiled underneath his mask as he met Sakura's watery gaze, "Because if I were in her position I would do the same exact thing." He thought of Obito and Rin as he said this.

Yamato knew there was nothing more he could say to stop her from doing it now that Kakashi had agreed to it. He turned around and started to walk away no longer wanting to have any part in this. That's why he was completely caught off guard when he felt two small, but strong arms wrap around him. "Thank you Yamato- taichou for caring enough to try and stop me, but this is something I have to do. Please try and understand." With those last words she released him. Something in her voice reminded him of their first mission together and how after bringing Naruto back from the 4 tailed state, she had asked him to teach her that jutsu. When he had told her he couldn't she had broken down and said, "_It's always like this. The only things I can do for Naruto are so small." _ He had told her that day that big or small it didn't matter, what was important was the strength of her feelings for Naruto. He turned in time to see Sakura kneel down beside Naruto and run her hand softly through his hair before placing a chaste kiss on his forehead.

"Sakura." Her green eyes met his dark ones and he noticed she was no longer crying. "I understand." His words brought a smile to her lips which he returned with one of his own. He walked over to stand by Kakashi who had been intently watching the entire exchange. The two stood a few feet from Sakura and Naruto.

Sakura closed her eyes and tried to calm herself knowing the time had finally come to finish what she started. As she cleared her mind she conjured up dozens of precious memories of this boy she had fallen for. She kept them close to her heart relying on them to give her the strength she needed. But before she could do that, she realized there was one more thing she needed to be sure of.

"He can't know," she spoke quietly. "I don't want him to be burdened with my death and for that to happen he can never know what really happened here."

"We'll tell him that you were killed during the invasion and we were able to get to him before he died," Kakashi promised her.

"Thank you." Those words were the last she spoke as she returned to preparing for the end of her life. She quickly preformed the hand seals and placed her hands over Naruto's unmoving chest. The sudden feeling of her charka draining surprised her and almost caused her to lose focus. She quickly found a memory to concentrate on. Naruto sitting at Ichiraku's stuffing his face with ramen and it flying out of his mouth as he continued to talk to her. When the drain became even stronger she searched her memory for another. The way she felt when Sasuke-kun had told her it had been Naruto who had fought so hard to protect her from Gaara. She felt her eyes growing heavier and her arms began to shake. How happy she had been when he had returned from his two year long training session with Jiraiya. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. The way it felt to have her arms around him when he returned from defeating Pain. No! No! No! She felt herself fall to the ground beside him. It wasn't enough! She quickly sought out his hand with her own. She tried again to bring back the memories, but her mind remained blank. She couldn't even make a sound if she wanted to. All her strength had deserted her. She would die here beside him having failed to do the one thing she wanted more than anything, to save him. That's when she felt it. A slight twitch of his fingers that she was sure she had imagined. When she felt it again she knew it wasn't a dream. She forced her eyes to open one last time and was met with the most beautiful sight she had ever seen, the slow rise and fall of Naruto's chest. As she took her last breaths a sudden memory of Chiyo-sama's final words came to her.

"_And Sakura do not risk your life for an old hag. Next time save that which is important to you." _

She felt Naruto's hand grasp her own and knew that Chiyo-sama would be proud.

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I love Sakura, but it's been driving me crazy that despite many opportunities she never does anything. Just allows the others to come her rescue, which led me to writing this. I don't want her to die, but I just wish she would do something.

As always thanks so much for reading and reviewing this story as well as my others. I really enjoy reading them! Thanks again!


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